PULLMAN, Wash. – New for the 2025 season, the Washington State Cougars football team welcomes Kris Kracht, the Director of Football Mental Performance.
Not just a therapist, Kracht offers mental training for the Cougs to make their performances better, just like a strength and conditioning coach does physically.
Kracht spoke to us about how to recover after losses like the North Texas game this past weekend.
“Do you view it as a threat?” Kracht said. “So, now we start thinking about the future, and the what-ifs, and what could happen, and we start thinking about outcome-based things. Or, do you really think about it as a great opportunity, a great challenge?”
Kracht brough up how to face said challenges with confidence instead of using fear to control mindsets, especially ahead of such a massive rivalry game like the Apple Cup.
“So, what a tremendous opportunity that we have coming off of a performance that we’re certainly not proud of, but now we got a great opportunity to take things ahead of us, and when you think about it as a great challenge, now we show up with confidence, we show up relaxed, we show up calm, we show up excited,” Kracht said.
Kracht also spoke about how to handle winning, and how the team improved from their Idaho to San Diego State wins without complacency.
“People want to say, ‘there’s no such thing as losing or failure if you learn from it,’ right, and I don’t agree with that, because I think you really should think about, whether we win or we lose, we should grow either way. And so when you approach a win or a loss the same way, we went back and we evaluated it no differently, and I think sometimes winning can be a deodorant.”
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